Eun-sook Character Analysis

Why would you sing the national anthem for people who've been killed by soldiers? Why cover the coffin with the Taegukgi? As though it wasn't the nation itself that had murdered them. […]

“But the generals are rebels, they seize power unlawfully. You must have seen it: people being beaten and stabbed in broad daylight, and even shot. The ordinary soldiers were following the orders of their superiors. How can you call them the nation?”

You found this confusing, as though it had answered an entirely different question to the one you wanted to ask. The national anthem rang out like a circular refrain, one verse clashing with another against the constant background of weeping, and you listened with bated breath to the subtle dissonance this created. As though this, finally, might help you understand what the nation really was.

His face was utterly ordinary. Thin lips, no noticeable irregularities to his features. He wore a pale yellow shirt with a wide collar, and his gray suit trousers were held up by a belt. Its buckle gleamed. Had they met by chance in the street, she would have taken him for some run-of-the-mill company manager or section chief.

“Bitch. A bitch like you, in a place like this? Anything could happen, and no one would find out.”

At this point, the force of the slap had already burst the capillaries in her cheek and the man's fingernails had broken her skin. But Eun-sook hadn't known that yet.

Her initial impression is that the pages have been burned. They’ve been thrown onto a fire and left to blacken […]

More than half of the sentences in the ten-page introduction have been scored through. In the thirty or so pages following, this percentage rises so that the vast majority of sentences have aligned through them. From around the fifth page onward, perhaps because drawing a line had become too labor-intensive, entire pages have been blacked out, presumably using an ink roller […]

She recalls sentences roughly darned and patched, places where the forms of words can just about be made out in paragraphs that had been otherwise expunged. You. I. That. Perhaps. Precisely. Everything. You. Why. Gaze. Your eyes. Near and far. That. Vividly. Now. A little more. Vaguely. Why did you. Remember? Gasping for breath in these interstices, tiny islands among language charred out of existence.

As she silently chewed the grains of rice, it occurred to her, as it had before, that there was something shameful about eating. Gripped by this familiar shame, she thought of the dead, for whom the absence of life meant they would never be hungry again. But life still lingered on for her, with hunger still a yoke around her neck. It was that which had tormented her for the past five years—that she could still feel hunger, still salivate at the sight of food.

She could have pressed her hands over her ears, could have screwed her eyes tight shut, shook her head from side to side or moaned in distress. Instead, she simply remembered you, Dong-ho. How you darted away at the stairs when she tried to take you home. Your face frozen with terror, as though escaping this importunate plea was your only hope of survival. Let’s go together, Dong-ho. We ought to leave together, right away. You stood there clinging to the second-floor railing, trembling. When she caught your gaze, Eun-sook saw your eyelids quiver. Because you were afraid. Because you wanted to live.

Certain crowds do not blench at the prospect of looting, murder, and rape, while on the other hand, others display a level of courage and altruism which those making up that same crowd would have had difficulty in achieving as individuals. The author argues that, rather than this latter type of crowd being made-up of especially noble individuals, that nobility which is a fundamental human attribute is able to manifest itself through borrowing strength from the crowd; also, similarly, that the former case is one in which humanity's essential barbarism is exacerbated not by the especially barbaric nature of any of the individuals involved, but through that magnification which occurs naturally in crowds.

Eun-sook closes her eyes. She does not want to see his face.

After you died I couldn’t hold a funeral, so my life became a funeral.

After you were wrapped in a tarpaulin and carted away in a garbage truck.

After sparkling jets of water sprayed unforgivably from the fountain.

Everywhere the lights of the temple shrines are burning.

In the flowers that bloom in spring, in the snowflakes. In the evenings that draw each day to a close. Sparks from the candles, burning in empty drinks bottles.

Scalding tears burn from Eun-sook’s open eyes, but she does not wipe them away. She glares fiercely at the boy’s face, at the movement of his silenced lips.

I heard a story about one of the Korean army platoons that fought in Vietnam. How they forced the women, children, and elderly of one particular village into the main hall, and then burned it to the ground. Some of those who claim to slaughter us did so with the memory of those previous times, when committing such actions and wartime had won them a handsome reward. It happened in Gwangju just as it did on Jeju Island, […] in Bosnia, and all across the American continent when it was still known as the new world, with such a uniform brutality it's as though it is imprinted in our genetic code. I never let myself forget that every single person I meet is a member of this human race.

[…] So tell me, professor, what answers do you have for me? You, a human being just like me.

If I demanded that you go home, Dong-ho; if I’d begged, while we sat there eating gimbap, you would have done as I asked, wouldn’t you?

And that’s why you’re coming to me now.

To ask why I’m still alive.

You walk, your eyes red rim seeming carved with some keen blade. Hurrying back to the bright lights of the emergency department.

There’s only one thing for me to say to you, onni.

If you’ll allow me to.

If you'll please allow me.

[…] As you walk along the straight white line that follows the center of the road, you raise your head to the falling rain.

Don’t die.

Just don’t die.

There was something meek and gentle about those single-lidded half-moon eyes. The traces of infancy still lingered in the soft line of his jaw. It was a face so utterly ordinary you could easily have mistaken it for that of another, a face whose characteristics would be forgotten the moment you turned away from it.

Why would you sing the national anthem for people who've been killed by soldiers? Why cover the coffin with the Taegukgi? As though it wasn't the nation itself that had murdered them. […]

“But the generals are rebels, they seize power unlawfully. You must have seen it: people being beaten and stabbed in broad daylight, and even shot. The ordinary soldiers were following the orders of their superiors. How can you call them the nation?”

You found this confusing, as though it had answered an entirely different question to the one you wanted to ask. The national anthem rang out like a circular refrain, one verse clashing with another against the constant background of weeping, and you listened with bated breath to the subtle dissonance this created. As though this, finally, might help you understand what the nation really was.

His face was utterly ordinary. Thin lips, no noticeable irregularities to his features. He wore a pale yellow shirt with a wide collar, and his gray suit trousers were held up by a belt. Its buckle gleamed. Had they met by chance in the street, she would have taken him for some run-of-the-mill company manager or section chief.

“Bitch. A bitch like you, in a place like this? Anything could happen, and no one would find out.”

At this point, the force of the slap had already burst the capillaries in her cheek and the man's fingernails had broken her skin. But Eun-sook hadn't known that yet.

Her initial impression is that the pages have been burned. They’ve been thrown onto a fire and left to blacken […]

More than half of the sentences in the ten-page introduction have been scored through. In the thirty or so pages following, this percentage rises so that the vast majority of sentences have aligned through them. From around the fifth page onward, perhaps because drawing a line had become too labor-intensive, entire pages have been blacked out, presumably using an ink roller […]

She recalls sentences roughly darned and patched, places where the forms of words can just about be made out in paragraphs that had been otherwise expunged. You. I. That. Perhaps. Precisely. Everything. You. Why. Gaze. Your eyes. Near and far. That. Vividly. Now. A little more. Vaguely. Why did you. Remember? Gasping for breath in these interstices, tiny islands among language charred out of existence.

As she silently chewed the grains of rice, it occurred to her, as it had before, that there was something shameful about eating. Gripped by this familiar shame, she thought of the dead, for whom the absence of life meant they would never be hungry again. But life still lingered on for her, with hunger still a yoke around her neck. It was that which had tormented her for the past five years—that she could still feel hunger, still salivate at the sight of food.

She could have pressed her hands over her ears, could have screwed her eyes tight shut, shook her head from side to side or moaned in distress. Instead, she simply remembered you, Dong-ho. How you darted away at the stairs when she tried to take you home. Your face frozen with terror, as though escaping this importunate plea was your only hope of survival. Let’s go together, Dong-ho. We ought to leave together, right away. You stood there clinging to the second-floor railing, trembling. When she caught your gaze, Eun-sook saw your eyelids quiver. Because you were afraid. Because you wanted to live.

Certain crowds do not blench at the prospect of looting, murder, and rape, while on the other hand, others display a level of courage and altruism which those making up that same crowd would have had difficulty in achieving as individuals. The author argues that, rather than this latter type of crowd being made-up of especially noble individuals, that nobility which is a fundamental human attribute is able to manifest itself through borrowing strength from the crowd; also, similarly, that the former case is one in which humanity's essential barbarism is exacerbated not by the especially barbaric nature of any of the individuals involved, but through that magnification which occurs naturally in crowds.

Eun-sook closes her eyes. She does not want to see his face.

After you died I couldn’t hold a funeral, so my life became a funeral.

After you were wrapped in a tarpaulin and carted away in a garbage truck.

After sparkling jets of water sprayed unforgivably from the fountain.

Everywhere the lights of the temple shrines are burning.

In the flowers that bloom in spring, in the snowflakes. In the evenings that draw each day to a close. Sparks from the candles, burning in empty drinks bottles.

Scalding tears burn from Eun-sook’s open eyes, but she does not wipe them away. She glares fiercely at the boy’s face, at the movement of his silenced lips.

I heard a story about one of the Korean army platoons that fought in Vietnam. How they forced the women, children, and elderly of one particular village into the main hall, and then burned it to the ground. Some of those who claim to slaughter us did so with the memory of those previous times, when committing such actions and wartime had won them a handsome reward. It happened in Gwangju just as it did on Jeju Island, […] in Bosnia, and all across the American continent when it was still known as the new world, with such a uniform brutality it's as though it is imprinted in our genetic code. I never let myself forget that every single person I meet is a member of this human race.

[…] So tell me, professor, what answers do you have for me? You, a human being just like me.

If I demanded that you go home, Dong-ho; if I’d begged, while we sat there eating gimbap, you would have done as I asked, wouldn’t you?

And that’s why you’re coming to me now.

To ask why I’m still alive.

You walk, your eyes red rim seeming carved with some keen blade. Hurrying back to the bright lights of the emergency department.

There’s only one thing for me to say to you, onni.

If you’ll allow me to.

If you'll please allow me.

[…] As you walk along the straight white line that follows the center of the road, you raise your head to the falling rain.

Don’t die.

Just don’t die.

There was something meek and gentle about those single-lidded half-moon eyes. The traces of infancy still lingered in the soft line of his jaw. It was a face so utterly ordinary you could easily have mistaken it for that of another, a face whose characteristics would be forgotten the moment you turned away from it.